by Peter Telep
Books by Peter Telep
Space: Above and Beyond Demolition Winter
Squire Squire's Blood Squire's Honor
Published by HarperPrism
This one's for:
Lauren Rose
Who will grow up to know why.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
John Silbersack and Caitlin Blasdell at HarperPrism have maintained a trust and belief in me that is both rare and invaluable. I am fortunate to once again be working with them.
For his assistance, counsel, and creativity, I am indebted to my agent, Robert Drake. We have a breakfast date set for June 1, 2040. There's this restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles that serves wonderful gourmet pasta mixed with homemade sausage and eggs. Robert and I will sit, eat, and speak rather pretentiously about the writing and publishing business. Then I will hand him the check.
My wife, Nancy, and I were blessed on September 5, 1995 with a baby girl. During the writing of this novel, both of my ladies were exceedingly patient. Working under tight deadlines is easy with their love and support.
prologue
From his vantage point near the stern of Amphibious Assault Vehicle #29354, First Lieutenant Nathan West watched the enemy Chig fighters strafe Jewelgo 177's black beach with salvos of glistening laser fire. The two dozen or more tri-winged warplanes presently owned the pink sky, and the first AAVs of the Marine Corps' Air/Ground Combat Element, fifty-first MEU, felt the effects of that ownership all too intimately. As the point line of eight swift, rectangular craft roared onto the beach with their piggyback, twin L-790 guns swiveling to track targets, Nathan observed with a widening mouth how one, two, and then a third AAV was rained on with sickening precision by Chig fighters. Amid a clamor from the Marines aboard the vehicles, all three, nearly in unison, burst into balls of smoke and fire and flesh.
Nathan rushed past the rest of the fifty-eighth squadron to get to the bow. Squinting, he saw that some Marines in the remaining five AAVs scrambled from the decks, dropped to the sand, and crawled toward the rolling dunes. Others took up defensive positions behind their parked vehicles.
"All right, Wild Cards, we're up next," Captain Shane Vansen said in the monotone she often assumed in combat. "West, you're point man out. Damphousse, Wang, take the flanks. Cooper and I got rear. Air support oughta be here in five mikes. Once the beach is secured, Wang, you'll handle the T-140 and ETC."
Paul Wang nodded, but there was an uncertainty in his eyes that Nathan had seen before. Despite the many sorties and ground Ops the first lieutenant from Chicago had run, he, like Nathan, had never grown used to combat. You get resigned to it, Nathan thought, but not much else.
"Got a question, Captain," Cooper Hawkes said, keeping his gaze fixed on the action ahead.
Shane lifted her brow. "Yeah?"
"You're sayin' stuff like 'once the beach is secured.' Well, the point line ain't securin' jack. Hope you got a backup plan that includes us gettin' our asses kicked."
"Coop, you're feedin' off the negativity again. Remember what we talked about?" Vanessa Damphousse asked.
Shane crossed to Cooper and yanked him by the shoulder to face her. She opened her mouth, but then she just stared him down until he turned away. She looked to Nathan, then to Wang and Damphousse. "Check your gear."
Just then Nathan heard something from behind, something which rose above the drone of the AAV's nuclear engine, a sound like fire being whipped in a breeze.
Before he could turn around, he heard Shane cry, "Incoming three shot!"
After hitting the deck, Nathan crawled to the port wall.
"Don't need an indicator to know it's locked on," Wang reported grimly. "You can hear it."
"Abandon ship?" Damphousse asked.
Cooper snorted. "Hell, yes."
"Over the bow. Now!" Shane ordered.
Nathan rose to his hands and knees, but then came a tremendous boom followed by the sound of bubbling water. The reinforced polymeric floor of the AAV shuddered violently, then the stern of the craft suddenly sank, lifting the AAV's triangular bow into the air so high that Nathan slid across the deck and was thrown into the air. He uttered something unintelligible before he plunged into the violet ocean.
This wasn't flipping over in a raft during a white-water vacation down the Colorado River, Nathan thought; this was getting the raft blown out from under you and getting tossed into an alien planet's ocean, one which, according to the experts in the Fleet Imagery Interpretation Unit, contained uncatalogued life forms. Nathan wasn't sure if the things he felt bumping into his legs and arms were sinking polymeric fragments from the AAV, the uncatalogued (which in his survival manual meant hostile) life forms, or other Marines. He was sure that the water was at least ten meters deep and that he had to strip out of his heavy combat gear and get to the surface. He slid off his rucksack, unclipped his belt and flak jacket, and then he realized there wasn't breath enough for the boots. He kicked as hard as he could and ran headfirst into the lip of the AAV's rail. The craft had capsized, but it wasn't sinking. Mentally swearing off the present pain and the headache he would surely have later, he forced himself up, up, until, with eyes closed, he felt the heat of Jewelgo 177's sun on his cheeks. But then, snapping his eyes open, he realized that the heat hadn't come from the sun but from Chig laser fire that had passed perhaps only a K-bar's length away from his face and had struck the water beside him. Then conventional fire pinged off the upturned belly of the AAV as a Chig fighter howled out of the cloudless sky and zeroed in.
Cooper blasted out of the warm water just ahead of Nathan. Lifting his M-590 rifle, Cooper sighted the bandit and shouted, "Get some!" Then he released one of his signature war cries and served the "spoogemeister" flying that Chig fighter an entire M-590 clip for brunch.
Doubly shocked, Nathan could not believe Cooper had managed to keep his rifle and that it still functioned despite the water contamination. Then again, Nathan thought, this isn't exactly water.
The Chig plane tore away from them, still under Cooper's fire, and then it banked right, heading for the beach.
"He's laughing at me!" Cooper shouted in disgust. "Didn't do squat to ruin his day." He threw away his empty rifle.
"Forget 'em," Nathan said. "And I don't think Chigs laugh."
"West? Hawkes? Sound off!" Shane called from the other side of the AAV.
"We're all right," Cooper answered, abandoning protocol. He had a tendency to do that. Military forms of ceremony and etiquette had nothing to do with combat, he'd often said. In most cases he was right.
"Accounted for," Nathan added.
"We ain't waitin' to get picked up. We're hittin' the beach," Shane said.
Nathan made a crooked grin. "Don't think an on-planet rescue team would bother with us anyway."
Cooper frowned. "Paul? 'Phousse?"
"They're AF," Shane answered. "Now ditch your boots, and let's go."
"Roger that," Cooper said.
Nathan struggled with a knot in his laces. "I'm wishin' my mother never taught me how to tie my shoes so well."
After yanking off a boot and tossing it aside, Cooper said, "You've heard it before, and I'll say it again. Wish I had a mother to bitch about. The monitors showed us In Vitroes videos on how to dress ourselves, then they smacked us around till we got it right. Fact, I actually remember one monitor saying something like 'damned tanks can't even tie their shoelaces. How'd we ever teach 'em how to fight?'"
Nathan shook his head. Cooper's "childhood" had been anything but. "Ready?"
Giving a wink and a nod, Cooper began to swim toward the beach. Nathan ke
pt on Cooper's six, but then he paused as he heard a chorus, a very beautiful chorus: the collected hum of SA-43 Endo/Exo Atmospheric Attack planes dispatched from the Saratoga. The fifty-third, forty-fourth, and sixty-first squadrons cut an attack line that took them a mere twenty meters above the water. The fifteen Hammerheads rocketed over Nathan, reached the shoreline, then fanned out in unison on hunter-killer missions.
Shane, Damphousse, and Wang were about fifteen meters to Nathan's left, and they, too, stopped to watch the always welcome air support begin to swat Chig fighters from the sky.
"That's where us pilots should be, dammit!" Cooper cried. "We get assigned this lousy ground Op, and we don't even get ground!"
"Hey, Coop," Damphousse called. "This ain't so bad. We go for a little swim, dry off, go back to our hotel suite, and get dressed up for a nice dinner. Then we go out dancing, sip drinks made in hollowed-out pineapples, and, finally, we pass out on the beach."
"No, no, no, no, no. We go for a little swim, dry off, then slap on our caps and T-shirts and plant ourselves in box seats for a Cubs game. Suck down a couple of drafts, have a couple dogs, couple slices of deep dish, catch a couple foul balls... yeah."
Shane winced. "We're gonna hit that beach in about five mikes. Enemy appears superior. How the hell can you be so nonchalant?"
Nathan grinned mildly at Shane. "That hotel suite and those hot dogs do sound good."
Shane sighed. "Whatever. Move out!"
Kicking hard and working his arms like they had taught him back at Loxley, Nathan pulled ahead of Cooper, which he knew would incite the other Marine into a competition. The maneuver worked, and he and Cooper splashed toward the shoreline as if they were in an Ironman event. However, a look over his shoulder proved that the rest of the squadron wasn't lagging far behind.
Of the twenty-four Amphibious Assault Vehicles which had been launched from the USS Brunswick, anchored about ten klicks off shore, Nathan figured that at least seventy-five percent of them had been able to roll onto the beach. The battalion borrowed from the Tenth Battle Group appeared to have made it, and the four infantry units had already spread out into the dunes to assume flanking positions. The IIU people reported that a Chig regiment that included twenty-one heavy gun nests, four artillery units, and the usual two companies of infantry stood in the fifty-first's way. Why the Chigs were defending the planet was anyone's guess, for it held little strategic importance. Thus, the fifty-first MEU would secure the beach on a seemingly worthless rock for the establishment of a firebase, and if you got any questions about that, Nathan thought, see Commodore Ross, who's typically not in the mood nor position to do much clarifying. The brass have their classified "compartmentalized" reasons for their decisions. Nathan just wished they would change their SOP and give the "little guys" a little more data.
Cooper swam back into the lead. "I'm liking this water, or whatever it is. It's smooth to touch."
"Yeah," Nathan agreed. "The colors are screwed up, but this place reminds me a lot of Earth."
"The universe doesn't care about light-year distances. Where beaches are meant to be, they exist," Wang said, doing a steady backstroke.
"But surf ain't up. A war is," Cooper complained.
Nathan smiled. "Don't worry, buddy. You'll get your chance to surf before you die."
"Hope so."
"I don't wanna change the subject or sound like Hawkes, but what the hell good are we gonna be on shore?" Wang asked. "We're in the rear with no gear."
"I still got my K-bar," Cooper announced. "Any Chiggies get close to me, listen for the hiss as I do 'em dirty."
Nathan realized that he, too, had his K-bar, the one strapped onto his calf.
"See that parked assault vehicle dead ahead?" Shane asked. "We'll move in behind it."
Cooper slowed his swim and yelled back to Shane. "Cover, yeah, that's fine. Then what?"
"Just swim, dammit!" she answered. "And Hawkes. When we're on the beach, you'd better be raising that knife instead of questions."
"Thinking Marines, they tell me," Cooper muttered, loud enough for Nathan to hear but probably not Shane. "Thinking Marines. Well, I'm thinking this sucks!"
"Fight now, complain later," Nathan said.
"I like complaining. I need to complain."
Nathan felt a warm sensation on the back of his neck, heard the telltale whir, then he and Cooper were swimming in the middle of parallel lines of conventional fire that charged back to the beach. He craned his neck to have a look at the Chig even as the fighter's shadow passed over him. "Next time around he'll have a bead on us!"
"We'll make it to cover before he does," Cooper shouted. "I'm touching bottom."
A roar sounded, and another shadow wiped over Nathan. He turned his gaze skyward to spot the belly of a Hammerhead.
"Kiss that Chig good-bye," Damphousse shouted, then she blew a kiss to the alien fighter as it climbed.
The Hammerhead that had passed over Nathan streaked onto the bogey's six, got a target lock, let a Fox missile fly, and the Chig paid the price. Glowing fragments of the craft tumbled toward the beach.
As the haze of the destroyed fighter slowly cleared, it revealed the commencement of enemy artillery fire, which arced in the sky and sought out the Marines advancing from the right flank. Still more rounds that were directed at the Brunswick cut high ribbons above the dogfights.
Nathan lowered his gaze and crawled onto the shore, heading for the AAV about ten meters away. He noted the locations of two gun nests dug into the dunes. They were occupied by pairs of Chigs who operated weapons that resembled 75mm recoilless guns mounted on tripods, yet the caliber of their ammunition was much smaller. Every time the aliens fired their weapons, strange, wing-like appendages flared near the muzzles. Nearby the nests, a dozen or so bodies of Marines who had attempted to storm the enemy lay in testament to the Chigs' marksmanship.
"Thought you were right behind me, West. C'mon," Cooper said. He had reached the AAV and sat facing Nathan.
"Got the twenties of two nests up there," Nathan said as he reached the tail of the vehicle. He sat next to Cooper, wishing he had an M-590 in his grip. "Got one nest at about forty degrees northeast, another at about sixty northwest. I'd give you a grid coordinate, but my DRF's a little wet right now."
"We don't need a range finder. What we need are a couple of smart grenades," Cooper said.
"Quit dreaming about what we don't got and make use of what we do." Shane raked her wet hair from her forehead, then stood, hunched over, near the corner of the AAV. She stole a furtive glance at the enemy, then turned back. "Good eyes, Nathan, but they're the only things good right now. Our situation's red-lining. Those Chigs got a clean line on this AAV."
"What about the L-790 up top?" Damphousse asked. "That TC software's easy to manipulate. We'll fire it manually at the nests."
"Forget that," Wang said.
"You've read the specs on these AAV's?" Nathan asked, already knowing the answer to his question.
Wang grinned mildly. "I've saved our butts more than once by doing the homework."
"Talk to me," Shane told Wang.
"When the charge is low, the guns shut down automatically, otherwise this one would still be greasing Chigs. There's an auxiliary cell, but this one must've switched over and used it, too."
Cooper shook his head. "All of which is to say the gun ain't worth a damn."
"Not necessarily," Wang corrected. "There's a solar cell, but it—"
Alien rounds punched the sand on the east side of the vehicle.
"Now they're really pissing me off," Damphousse said.
Nathan closed the gap between himself and the AAV. The rest of the squadron did likewise.
"Well, we gotta do something. And I ain't for stayin' here," Cooper informed the group.
"Who is?" Nathan asked.
Wang looked in the direction of Jewelgo 177's sun. "I was saying that the solar cell takes about thirty mikes to reach a full charge on this planet."
; "We ain't waitin' thirty mikes," Shane said. "Can we get the vehicle rolling? Use it as a decoy?"
"From here it looks like she's just taken a mild beating," Nathan said. "Frame and treads are intact. Let's try the doggie door. Maybe they left it open." He went to the square, rear hatch which was about a meter and half above the sand. After turning a dial, he gave a yank. 'Nope."
"Smart Marines," Wang said. "Chiggies like to drop in uninvited. In fact, the rude bastards don't even knock."
Shane drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. "We're gonna have to go over the top."
Cooper crossed to Damphousse and motioned her away from one of the AAV's treads. "If any of you think you got a better dive-and-roll than me, say it. Otherwise, don't argue." With that, Cooper slapped a bare foot onto a tread and began the four-meter ascent of the hull.
"Don't waste a second up there, Coop," Damphousse said.
"Why? We gettin' paid by the hour now?"
"She means she doesn't wanna see you get your head shot off," Wang explained.
Cooper snickered. "Don't look." Then, reaching the rear rail, he added, "And if you are gonna look, ladies and gentlemen, it's show time." With a cry that betrayed his fear, he swung himself over the rail.
And the Chigs in the nests let loose with everything they had, turning the railing and walls of the AAV into a war drum. Nathan could only imagine what it sounded like inside the vehicle. Then the aliens ceased fire.
"Coop?" Damphousse called urgently.
The lieutenant's voice came from above. "Oh, man. Oh, man."
"You all right?" Nathan asked.
"I'm on the deck," Cooper answered, sounding as if he didn't believe his words. "Could use a little help. Correction. Need help."
"You shot?" Shane asked.
"No."
Nathan looked to Shane and lifted his brow.
She regarded him a moment, then directed her attention to the AAVs rail. "What's the problem, Hawkes?"
Cooper began coughing. Actually, it sounded more like gagging to Nathan.
"Hey, Coop? Talk to me, buddy," Wang said.
